The total cost of these was $5,956.24. Averagely, each calendar cost $0.3818. The Senate ordered 5,600 copies in all. Five thousand copies were mounted with illustrations. Boards for mounting 700 of these were supplied by the Senate as salvage from deliveries made in previous years. Six hundred were mounted on white cardboard. Our total charge for Senate calendars was $1,956.64 amounting to an average cost of $0.3494 each.

Deliveries of wall calendars were made to over 208 agencies and/or bureaus of Government, including judiciary and legislative organizations, as follows:

Single calendars, large size 11% by 96 inches: 267,332 at $0.04 each, totaling $10.693.28.

Single calendars, small size 8% by 7% inches: 146,000 copies at $0.034 each, totaling $4,964.

Three-month calendar, boards with hooks for mounting 3-up on boards; 20,080 copies at 26 cents each, totaling $5,220.80.

The following summarizes all orders for the current calendar year:

Mr. HORAN. At this time I would like to read a part of a letter received April 21, by the chairman of the whole committee, Mr. John Taber. It is from Mr. Grover C. Willett, 2405 Birth Drive, Larchmont, Baltimore 7, Md. It reads:

A short time ago I ordered from the Superintendent of Documents a copy of the new Congressional Directory. When I received it it was enclosed in a mailing wrapper different from any I have ever seen. It is a fine protective enclosure. have never received a book from a private publishing house in such a shipping wrapper which suggests the thought that it must be too expensive for them to use. We have a copy of this and I understand that you can supply us with the details.

Mr. EASTIN. Apparently this gentlemen has not purchased very many books or publications by mail from private publishers because we cannot take credit for having discovered this type of wrapper. We borrowed this idea from private publishing companies. It is a bag which is packed with waste newspaper which is finely ground up and as the inquirer or as the correspondent wrote, it does provide a very fine protection for publications. Before we adopted this bag, which has been in use in industry for a long time before we started it, we made exhaustive tests with the bag. We sent packages to various depository libraries and asked them to check the condition of the material in this bag as against our former method which was to wrap with cardboard which had to be cut to size and wrapped around and is quite an expensive operation. I do not care to be giving any particular testimonial to the manufacturers of this bag but our study showed that the bag was cheaper from the material standpoint and much faster from the standpoint of the amount of time that it takes

to insert a publication in the bag and slap a piece of tape on it. Although we cannot claim to be ahead of the trend or ahead of private industry, as the correspondent suggests, we do find that this bag is a much more economical mailing wrapper all around.

FEDERAL REGISTER

Mr. HORAN. We have Mr. Eberhart from the Federal Register here. Do you have a prepared statement?

Mr. EBERHART. No, sir.

Mr. COLE. Mr. Eberhart's figures are in the last item in the justification.

Mr. HORAN. That is already in the record.

Mr. COLE. We brought him along in case you asked any questions about the Federal Register, he being directly from the Archives we thought he might be able to answer better than we could.

Mr. HORAN. I do not think we can cut off the Federal Register? Mr. COLE. The actual business of the Federal Register-the Public Printer is a partner in that publication but merely a technical partner on how to produce it. In the meetings of the Federal Register Committee the Government Printing Office is called on for the technical aspects of actually producing the job and not for determining what goes in it or how it is to be prepared.

Mr. HORAN. I notice that your estimated expenditures for 1954 is less by quite a bit than they were, than the estimated for fiscal 1953. What is the reason for that?

Mr. EBERHART. For the Federal Register? The controls program and the various emergency programs are quite obviously not going to be in effect in this coming year. The Register, consequently, will not be so voluminous.

Mr. HORAN. That is the reason for the saving.

Mr. COLE. The other angle in the Code of Federal Regulations, is that they are now devised so that new regulations come out as additional parts or supplements. That figure changes from year to year and is determined by the number of reprints of the full volumes that they are going to print during the year. When supplements get too voluminous it becomes necessary to reprint editions.

The estimates here, any savings will be automatically returned to the Treasury if that amount is not spent.

All of the funds that remain in our account at the end of the fiscal year are returned to the Treasury. It takes 2 years to get them back into the Treasury but that is because of the obligations that are out against the funds. No new obligations can be made on the fund after the close of the fiscal year.

about a

Actually, there will be a return this year. We are not prepared to say how much. We would guess if we were asked right now, million and a quarter dollars. It might run as high as a million and a half but until the end of June and until the obligations are finally cleared in the books we have no way of knowing exactly what that figure will be but it looks as though the Government Printing Office will turn back to the Treasury something better than a million dollars and it might go as high as a million and a half this year.

Mr. HORAN. Without any action of this subcommittee at all? Mr. COLE. Yes, sir. If there is any money left in the congressional fund, the money you appropriate for congressional printing, it goes back into the Treasury at the close of the fiscal year.

If we run out of congressional money before the close of the fiscal year, we either stop printing the Record or come back for a supplemental appropriation.

Mr. HORAN. Any questions, gentlemen?

If not, the committee will stand adjourned until 10 o'clock tomorrow morning.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

WITNESSES

LUTHER H. EVANS, LIBRARIAN OF CONGRESS

VERNER W. CLAPP, CHIEF ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN

FREDERICK H. WAGMAN, DIRECTOR OF ADMINISTRATIVE DEPARTMENT

ERNEST S. GRIFFITH, DIRECTOR OF LEGISLATIVE REFERENCE SERVICE

ARTHUR FISHER, REGISTER OF COPYRIGHTS

JOHN W. CRONIN, DIRECTOR OF PROCESSING DEPARTMENT
LAWRENCE KEITT, LAW LIBRARIAN

ROBERT C. GOOCH, ACTING DIRECTOR OF REFERENCE DEPART-
MENT

WILLIAM W. ROSSITER, BUDGET OFFICER

Mr. HORAN. Gentlemen, the committee will now come to order. We are privileged to have the Librarian of the Library of Congress with us this morning. We also have Mr. Clapp, Dr. Ernest Griffith, from the Legislative Reference Service, and an assembled staff.

You have a general statement, I assume, Dr. Evans, so would you please either read that or summarize it for us?

GENERAL STATEMENT

Dr. EVANS. Mr. Chairman, I do have a statement and I do have a number of copies. There is a slight insertion that needs to be made on one page which is being made. I would like to summarize this statement, Mr. Chairman, and then leave copies with you.

Mr. HORAN. If you do not mind, Dr. Evans, we will insert this in the record and then you can summarize it.

Dr. EVANS. Thank you.

(The statement follows:)

STATEMENT OF THE LIBRARIAN

Mr. Chairman, gentlemen, it is a pleasure for me to appear before this committee to give a brief report on the current status of the Library of Congress and its needs and possibilities. I speak, gentlemen, for a truly great institution. Each year additional evidence is accumulated of its value to the Government and the Nation as a whole. You have reason to be proud of your library. It represents the greatest single continuing effort to assemble, preserve, and organize the record of human civilization that has ever been made in the entire history of mankind. This is perhaps a startling statement. It is nonetheless true. And this great effort is the work of the Congress of the United States and of your humble servant, for more than 150 years.

There are many reasons why the Library of Congress should have developed into the institution you find it today. But the main cause has been one controlling principle that has governed the Library's history. I refer to the principle that

our Government must have available, in organized form, all the published information which it requires for the informed conduct of the Nation's affairs and for the solution of its pressing problems, foreign and domestic.

The growth of the Library's collections and the development of its services in recent years reflect the effort to keep pace with the tremendous broadening of the range of important problems that beset our Nation-the concern over what happens in areas of the world in whose affairs we had little interest a short 20 years ago; the urgent need for information under the stress of hot war and of cold

war.

The Library must procure these published sources of information in advance of the demands or of the need for it. This means that we must seek out not merely the published books available in the bookdstores of the western world, but the laws of Cambodia, the newspapers of revolutionaly movements on the African Gold Coast, the proceedings of learned institutes in Egypt, the official gazettes of Indian States. Most of these publications we can and do acquire merely by asking for them, but we must have staff to discover that they exist, determine whom to ask and what to send in exchange, and to carry on the other work involved.

When the publications arrive they must be accessioned and cataloged so that they may be found quickly among the many millions of other publications stored in our two buildings. The Library is, among other things, a gigantic filing system where the filing is complicated by hundreds of languages and thousands of subjects and where the separate items approximate 10 million books and 20 million other pieces. This involves processes and problems of arrangement and identification which have taxed the best brains of librarians for several generations.

The majority of the publications which we acquire must be bound, and they must all be shelved and finally they must be delivered to readers. For this it is necessary that we have reference staff available who can find the precise publica tions needed by using the largest and most complex system of library catalogs in existence and by depending on their special knowledge of our collections, of geographic areas, of foreign languages, and subject fields.

These are the heart, the essential operations of the Library. It is on this work that all other operations of the Library are based. Although the collections themselves have increased 82 percent in the past 10 years, yet the staff available for this central and fundamental work has not grown appreciably.

Meanwhile, however, other operations of the Library, most of which depend on these central operations, have increased considerably. In 1943 the staff of the Legislative Reference Service numbered 54. Today it has 151 employees, a 180 percent increase. Ten years ago the Card Division employed 115 people. Today it employs 179, a 56 percent increase. In 1943 the Copyright Office had a staff of 137. Today that number is 239, a 74 percent increase. The appropriation for books for the blind has risen from $370,000 in 1943 to $1 million in 1953, or almost 3 times as much. These increases have all been justified. The printed catalog card service has increased only as its sales have increased, which return the entire cost of the service to outside libraries to the Treasury, plus a 10 percent profit. The copyright work has similarly increased only as registrations have returned its cost to the Treasury in fees and to the Library in valuable publications received as deposits. The increased appropriation for books for the blind has been authorized by substantive legislation preceded by hearings. The Legislative Reference Service has grown because it has demonstrated its usefulness directly to the members of Congress.

Meanwhile the staff available for the central work of the Library-for acquisitions, cataloging, binding books, putting them on the shelves, bringing them to readers, answering reference questions, operating the Law Library, cleaning and guarding the building-all the fundamental work of the institution has increased only from 920 positions in 1943 to 1,032 today, or only 12 percent.

With this 12 percent increase in the central staff, we have been under the necessity of absorbing and servicing acquisitions totaling more than 11 million pieces in the last 8 years alone-a 49 percent increase in total collections, and demands for service 82 percent more overall than 10 years ago. I need hardly remind you that there are few Government agencies whose civilian personnel (and especially the research personnel which make use of us) has not increased considerably more than 12 percent during the past decade. Indeed, the staff of Congress itself, to which we owe our first order of service, has increased considerably during the period.

To complicate the situation further it has been necessary to expand our work to cover publications and languages in areas of the world where the Library's experience was previously very limited and where the procurement of materials requires expert guidance. We have had to develop our reference and bibliographical services on Asia, on the countries of Eastern Europe and in the field

of science to keep up, even partially, with the increased demands made upon us. We have had to contend with rapidly rising prices of books and subscriptions in recent years in the face of a 10 percent reduction of our appropriation for the purchase of these books and serials since 1950. Although in 1943 the 2 appropriations for this purpose totaled $263,000, during the subsequent 10 years they averaged $390,500 per year. These appropriations for fiscal year 1953 total $355,500, or 9 percent less than the average for the past 10 years.

How have we accommodated ourselves to these increases of work in the central operations of the Library, without corresponding increases in staff? In five ways: 1. By economizing.-We have sought shorter and cheaper methods of cataloging for certain classes of publications; we have reduced the record-keeping on serials; we use an inexpensive though ugly form of quarter binding, like this for an increasing proportion of our materials instead of the more expensive elite binding like this and in every other way which we have found possible we have cut to the bare minimum. We are now below generally accepted Government standards of staffing, in many cases. For example, these standards provide for 1 employee for each 3,500 vouchers examined; we have only 1 for each 7,302. The Government standard for payroll work is 1 employce for each 235 employees on the roll; we have only 1 for each 338. The standard for health is $9 per employee; our is only $6.95. The average annual salary paid from funds appropriated to the Library of Congress (exclusive of the Legislative Reference Service where salaries are determined by statute relative to grades paid in other agencies) is $4,051. This is lower than the average salary of such comparable agencies as the General Accounting Office, the Weather Bureau, the Patent Office, and the Bureau of Standards. I am sure that no great library in the world binds so large a proportion of its books in as inexpensive a form as we.

Though we are still looking for places to economize, I am fearful that we may have already reached the point where short-range economy is long-range wastefulness.

2. By reducing services.- We have, for example, closed up the bookstacks in the evenings and require that anyone who wants to use a book from the stacks at that time must make arrangements in advance. We have eliminated the local newspaper reference set in the periodicals reading room. We decline to answer more than 50 percent of the inquiries we receive by mail, but reply with form letters referring the inquirers elsewhere. The time required for delivery of books from the bookstacks has approximately doubled from an average of 20 minutes to about 40.

3. By deferring work.-We have deferred large quantities of books to be cataloged in a priority 4 collection, which under present circumstances will never be fully cataloged. We have an estimated 147,000 volumes of periodicals and newspapers awaiting assembly for binding. We have an estimated 288,000 volumes ready for binding which we must defer for want of funds. Of older books we have an estimated 259,000 volumes which badly require attention because the original bindings, 50 or more years old, are falling apart, and this principal collection of the United States Government is getting into a shocking state. We should check the shelves for accuracy at least once a year, but our present checking is at the rate of once every 10 years, and meanwhile, thousands of books out of place are reported missing. We use wooden shelf supports in place of steel in some important areas.

4. By gifts and transfers of funds.-Our collections are so important to the country at large and to other Government agencies that funds are transferred to us to perform basic operations so that we can be in a position to give service. This is much as if we were to transfer funds to the Navy to build a battleship because we need protection. Actually, however, much of the basic operations on some of the outstandingly used and needed collections has been done at the expense of other agencies or private foundations, and we now have 309 persons on our rolls, engaged in basic operations (not special services) paid for by these outside sources of funds. (We also have 380 persons on our rolls engaged in special services.)

5. By limiting our purchases of books. To the reduction in our appropriation for the purchase of materials and the rising cost of publications we have adjusted by reducing our purchases of older books needed to fill gaps in the collections and concentrating our purchases almost entirely in the field of current publications. In consequence, I must be frank in reporting to you, in spite of what I consider very notable achievements in service rendered, a steady deterioration of our central services-a deterioration which is all the more to be deplored because it results in further losses of manpower and waste motion in searching for books.